“You have to remember, Betsy,” Schoendienst would say, “that D.C. is not about solving problems. If we solved problems, there would be nothing else left to do and we would all have to go out and do something honest—like fry hamburgers. No, D.C. is about keeping jobs, which we do by managing problems. There is no higher achievement than making a problem your own, managing that problem, nurturing that problem along until you’ve made it to retirement and hopefully mentored a whole new generation of young bureaucrats to whom you can bequeath the problem. The purpose of the interagency task force is to bring the resources of several agencies and many bureaucrats to bear on a promising new problem that needs special care and nurturing.”
By that time Betsy had grown used to the cynicism of this alcoholic old man, but his words came back to her forcefully during the first meeting of the group in the big antenna-covered barn at Kennebunkport. It soon became evident that this was a dog and pony show for Millikan—a chance for him to demonstrate his superior clout, especially to Hennessey. It also became painfully evident that there was absolutely no reason for them to be there—they were just having their chains yanked.
Some new satellite photos were displayed, which would have meant nothing to Betsy in and of themselves. But the DIA representative led them patiently through an elaborate chain of analysis and deduction to demonstrate the true import of these photographs: namely, that the Iraqis had adapted their South African G-5 missiles to carry chemical and bacteriological payloads. This was not unexpected; no one had shown a greater willingness to use such weapons in the past than Saddam. However, two weeks after the invasion the thought that Americans might be the target—not Kurds or Vakhan Turks—lent a special and ominous urgency to the information.
After that they flew back to D.C., and each went his or her separate way in his or her separate bureaucracy. Betsy went back to her job, and, she assumed, so did the other members of the task force. The only difference was that they had to meet once a week, on the tenth floor of the New Executive Office Building, to discuss their progress, in a living reenactment of the old Indian tale of the blind men and the elephant. All of the members had been terribly busy even before they’d been named to the task force, and the weekly two-hour meeting was a huge bite out of their time budgets. Since everybody could simply read everybody else’s stuff, Betsy didn’t understand, at first, why they had to go through the formal oral presentations every Monday.
Each member of the task force had his or her weekly presentation ready and weekly paper turned in on time, with the exception of Hennessey, who played mum. The first time this happened, Betsy assumed that it was an oversight. The second time she realized it was a pattern, and all her good-girl instincts were appalled. What would the taxpayers say? When Hennessey showed up for the third meeting with nothing to say and nothing to hand out, a subtle change came over the task force. Simply by not having said anything, Hennessey had taken on a certain air of authority. Millikan, of course, did not preside over the meetings—his assistant, Dellinger, did. Since Dellinger’s only role seemed to be to remind the group over and over that anything of substance had to go through Millikan, the members of the task force rapidly stopped paying attention to him. An unspoken competition arose. When people took their seats around the table, they turned toward Hennessey. When they gave their presentations, they faced Hennessey. When one of them handed out a newly minted classified document, the author would watch Hennessey’s face as he scanned through the pages; and if Hennessey didn’t bother even to leaf through it, the author would be humiliated and defensive for the rest of the meeting. In this way, simply by doing nothing—by withholding information—Hennessey took on a certain gravity that made him into the éminence grise, the undisputed defacto leader of Millikan’s task force.
The NSF guys believed that the Iraqis had been carrying out some advanced research in DNA technology, to develop a means to alter their forces’ genetic codes in such a way so that when they attacked with their chemical/biological agents (the distinction between chemical and biological was blurry in this case) only those with the genetic protection would survive. This had the advantage that changes in wind would not alter the weapons’ usefulness, and conquered territory could be occupied without delay. They had some substantial evidence that the Iraqis had tried to work with such techniques in experiments with animals, and Betsy was able to bolster that theory with the information she had developed about the distribution of Iraqi student visas to schools with advanced veterinary-medicine programs.